An insurrection in words: East End voices in the 1970s

Race & Class ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Harcup
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Pedagogy Of The Oppressed ◽  
The Creation ◽  
East End ◽  
Community Publishing

From 1971 to 1976, Chris Searle was at the centre of a number of events in the East End of London that, nearly four decades on, continue to resonate. This article uses a combination of reminiscence, reflection, contemporaneous and retrospective accounts, and engagement with the writings of Searle himself, to explore the meanings of the ‘Stepney Words insurrection’ and the creation of the Basement Writers. The article is informed by ideas of critical literacy, including Paulo Freire’s ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, and argues that community publishing can be seen as an expression of working-class agency and active citizenship within an alternative or ‘plebeian public sphere’.

The Museum Istiqlal The Case of an Indonesian Islamic Museum

SUHUF ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-357
Author(s):  
Jonathan Zilberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Education Sector ◽  
Significant Potential ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Government

This article describes the conflicted genesis of the Museum Istiqlal, the history of  the creation of the collection, and the state of the institution relative to other Indonesian museums. It emphasizes both  positive developments underway and the historical problems facing the institution. Above all, it focuses on the role the museum was originally intended to serve for the Indonesian Muslim public sphere and the significant potential the museum has to better serve that mission in the national and international sphere. In short, the article emphasizes that in the context of the Government of Indonesia’s current four year plan to revive the museum sector, the problems and opportunities presented at the Museum Istiqlal are symptomatic of endemic national challenges for both the museum and the education sector.

Working-Class Autobiography, c.1970–1985

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Community Publishing

This chapter examines working-class autobiographies and oral history testimonies created in the 1970s by the ‘history from below’, oral history, and community publishing movements. It finds that most working-class autobiographers felt that class divisions had weakened and changed radically in the post-war years: they identified improvements in housing, the NHS, education, and the power of workers as key alterations. The disappearance of live-in domestic service was a particularly powerful symbol of the changes that had taken place. Though none thought class had disappeared, many thought class divides were less powerful. While some working-class autobiographers wrote that their experiences made them instinctive socialists, in fact political activism did not flow straightforwardly from experience, but was the result of political education and context. Working-class experience was highly diverse, and as this became clear to many in the community publishing movement, it led to changes in their activist practice in the 1980s.

Archiving the British Raj

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
The Public ◽  
British Raj ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Central Archive

The archives are generally sites where historians conduct research into our past. Seldom are they objects of research. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya traces the path that led to the creation of a central archive in India, from the setting up of the Imperial Record Department, the precursor of the National Archives of India, and the Indian Historical Records Commission, to the framing of archival policies and the change in those policies over the years. In the last two decades of colonial rule in India, there were anticipations of freedom in many areas of the public sphere. These were felt in the domain of archiving as well, chiefly in the form of reversal of earlier policies. From this perspective, Bhattacharya explores the relation between knowledge and power and discusses how the World Wars and the decline of Britain, among other factors, effected a transition from a Eurocentric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal and less ethnocentric one.

Pictorial Debates: The Tatar Satirical Journal Yalt-Yolt and Muslim Modernity Discourses, 1906-1917

Experiment ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-181
Author(s):  
Azade-Ayse Rorlich
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Russian Empire

Abstract The Great Reform era in Russia, as well as the modernist movements in the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim lands represent the background against which the Muslims of the Russian Empire engaged in the scrutiny of the reasons behind the backwardness of their societies and began advocating the compatibility of Islam with modernity. After 1906, the Muslim press became the most important instrument in the creation of the public sphere where issues of tradition and modernity were debated. This essay focuses on the Tatar satirical journal Yalt-Yolt to explore its contribution to the critique of the old Muslim mentalité, as well as its role as an instrument of modernity.

Facing Democratic Crisis in the EU: the New European Citizens’ Initiative Regulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-147
Author(s):  
Diego González Cadenas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
European Public Sphere ◽  
European Public ◽  
Technical Issues ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Effective Development ◽  
Popular Initiative ◽  
Legitimacy Crisis ◽  
The Eu

For some scholars, the possibilities for diminishing the European democratic deficit and the Union’s legitimacy crisis are intertwined with the creation of a European demos and a European public sphere, that, in turn, can create a European civil solidarity. The European citizens’ initiative, which has recently been re-regulated, was precisely designed to help to solve these problems. As we shall see, the new Regulation includes a whole series of positive technical issues that will improve the usage of the mechanism. However, the European citizens’ initiative is still far from being a popular initiative and, therefore, to contribute to diminish the perception of distance between institutions and citizens of the EU or promoting the creation of a European demos. In this vein, after an overview of the European citizens’ initiative new Regulation main innovations and weaknesses, I will present a set of measures in order to achieve a more effective development of the mechanism.

The Making of a Working-Class Suburb in Hamilton's East End, 1900-1945

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Harrs ◽  
Mast Sendbuehler
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
East End

scholarly journals Heiner Goebbels's Stifters Dinge and the Arendtian Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Luke Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collaborative Working ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Working Processes

Heiner Goebbels’s works are examples of “postdramatic” theatre works that engage with the political by seeking to challenge socially ingrained habits of perception rather than by presenting traditional, literary-based theatre of political didacticism or agitation. Goebbels claims to work toward a “non-hierarchical” theatre in the contexts of his arrangement of the various theatrical elements, in fostering collaborative working processes between the artists involved, and in the creation of audience-artist relationships. In offering a reading of Goebbels’s “no-man show” Stifters Dinge, this paper seeks to situate Goebbels’s practice within a theoretical tradition that also encompasses Hannah Arendt’s deployment of the theatre as a metaphor for the public sphere. Within this analysis, I suggest, theatre can be seen to offer the possibility of a participatory democracy through its attention to disappearance and absence.

The Oscillating Public Sphere: A Response from the US to Linda Hogan's Review Article

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
William Storrar
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Terrorist Events

AbstractSince Public Theology for the 21st Century was first published, the world has witnessed the terrorist events of 9/11 and is now experiencing a growing economic crisis. While the contributors to the volume could not have addressed these events specifi cally, the discussions within the book contain valuable analyses of democracy, active citizenship and the notion of social capital that are highly pertinent in the current climate. Public theology must grapple with and adapt to these changed and changing social and political circumstances.

No Bodily Rights Worth Protecting

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-107
Author(s):  
Erica Lorraine Williams
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Object A ◽  
Black Popular Culture ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Black Public Sphere ◽  
Normative Practices ◽  
Sexual Labor ◽  
The Relationship

The sexual labor of music making began, in earnest, with the classic Blues women of the 1920s who epitomized the turn to a national Black popular culture. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was one of the most prolific of her cohort and made a career describing, in intimate detail, the interior lives of Black women and working class communities. Her popularity was a testament to her talents as a singer and performer but also to the skill of those around her, including the “Father of the Gospel Blues,” composer Thomas Dorsey and his wife, seamstress Nettie Dorsey. The materiality of the relationship shared between Mrs. Dorsey and Rainey is found in the dresses painstakingly sewn by Dorsey and glamorously displayed on stage by Rainey. While pleasant for the eye, these dresses also carry sounds—the music of its making as well as its performative display, making this object a text. In this examination, Redmond exposes the close proximities that exist within the costumes sewn by Mrs. Dorsey and worn by Rainey—namely the relationship between pious respectability and working-class nonheternomativity, laboring femininity and sonorous vocalities. Mrs. Dorsey’s work documents dressmaking as a sonic production capable of facilitating the growth of new industries and challenging the normative practices within the early twentieth century Black public sphere. Microreadings of these items, laborers, and artists expose some of the detail of Black political cultures in this moment and highlight the intertextual and multimedia enterprise of Black women’s sexual economies.

From Happy Individuals to Universal Sisterhood

Walter Besant ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
Vicky Cheng ◽  
Haejoo Kim
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Familial Bonds ◽  
East End ◽  
Walter Besant ◽  
Liberal Thought

This essay traces the shifting frameworks of affective reform proposed by Walter Besant in two of his novels about the East End, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882) and Children of Gibeon (1886). While the cultivation of individual happiness based on bourgeois domesticity offers a strategy for reorienting working-class values in the former novel, the latter promotes a pursuit of communitarian values rooted in universal sisterhood, which supersedes familial bonds and class distinctions. Reading these two novels in conversation with each other reveals a narrative critique of rights-based individualism along the lines of revisionist liberal thought, and redirects affective attention toward fostering kinship associations for communal mutuality.

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